Time Salvager (13 page)
She was a dead person; that’s why not. And he had a job to do. His internal struggle continued back and forth for several more seconds.
Elise sensed his hesitation and whistled. “Wow, I totally read all the signs wrong on that one. Color me embarrassed. I’m sorry, crewman. I’ll be on my way.” She turned away abruptly and sped down the ramp.
James watched as she disappeared around the corner. It was the right thing to do, letting her go. He had a mission. He wasn’t from this time. No good could come out of this.
“She’s just a ghost. She’s just a ghost,” he muttered over and over again. “I’ll be done with this and be on Europa in a year. Done with all this shit.”
He turned in the other direction to leave, and then stopped. Her badge. She had access to the Head Repository. He’d use hers. In fact, it was almost his duty to go buy her a drink to get close to her. James’s mouth broke into an almost giddy grin as he chased after her.
“Hey, Elise, hey!” He ran after her and jumped in front of her path. “I didn’t mean … I’d love to … Let me get you a drink.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Really? You blew it, pal. I don’t need your pity drink. I’ll get my own with someone who values my time.”
“No, that’s not what…” he stammered as she walked past him. James bit his lip and cursed.
“Hey, James, is everything all right? Your heart is redlining again,” Smitt said.
“Shut up, shut up!” James thought back furiously.
“Don’t make me pull you out early. Especially this job.”
James watched helplessly as she disappeared around the corner. What was with this place and corners? His mind raced. He didn’t have a lot of experience charming women. He hurried after her again.
“Excuse me, Elise,” the words hurried out of his mouth.
She turned and studied him coolly. “I believe what you meant to say was excuse me,
Colonel,
or
ma’am.”
“Yes, ma’am, I apologize for inconveniencing you but I’m new to the Nutris and was wondering if there was a local establishment that served drinks,” he said.
“East end of the sector. Three levels up, B15,” she said, looking away with an exaggerated expression of indifference. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have important things to do.”
“Could you take me there? I get turned around easily. Last time I got lost in this sector, I nearly starved. If it wasn’t for—”
“You’re such a dork.” She rolled her eyes and smirked. “Fine, I’ll take you, but you’re buying drinks all night. Before I was going to let you buy me just one, with your pay scale, but now you got a lot of making up to do.”
A few minutes later, they were seated in the officers’ quarters at the Crystal Proof, one of the two bars in the floating city. Elise, being of proper rank, was allowed to bring James in as a guest. Still, it did earn him a few hard looks, including one from his asshole commanding officer. He guessed there were more single men here than Elise thought.
“So,” she leaned toward him, “tell me about yourself. You must have an interesting story.”
James watched his words. “Why do you think that? I’m as normal as they come.”
She gave him a good-natured look of disbelief. “I don’t think so. You look to be in your midthirties, but you don’t have anything on you. I don’t know anyone this day and age without any mods, implants, or inks. You’re as ugly as the day Gaia made you.”
James paused. “Why are you having a drink with me again?”
Elise leaned in. “I like a man who’s comfortable enough not to get artificial. They just don’t make guys who aren’t plastic anymore.” She reached a hand out and tilted his face left and then right. “There’s even scars on your face that you never bothered to have removed. Which conflict were you involved in?”
James’s face froze. “Smitt, I need a war. Just feed me something.”
“There hasn’t been a real war in fifty years. The time period before World War Three was the tail end of mankind’s golden era.”
“Security,” James said. “Private corporate military.”
“Ah, you did it for the money.”
“Isn’t that why we’re all here?” he said, taking a sip of twenty-first-century whiskey, which tasted like fine smoke, dirt, and lemons. Obviously, in this century, the art of whiskey-making was at its peak as well. James couldn’t remember another moment in his life when he was happier than right now, sitting across the table from Elise while holding this fine beverage.
Elise feigned shock. “What? You’re getting paid? Almost all of us here are on stipends.”
“What sort of military city puts their people on stipends?” He laughed.
Her face took a turn for the serious. “Wait, you’re not kidding? You’re actually getting paid? How is it possible that security is getting paid when all the scientists are volunteers?”
James was confused but quickly recovered. “Stipend. Salary. It’s all the same thing to me. It is a pittance, though. Now I know why. Didn’t realize I had signed up for a silly nonprofit.”
He thought to Smitt, “We need to dig deeper on this. Something isn’t right. This isn’t the military installation we thought it was.”
“Checking. Stand by, James.”
He spent the rest of the evening admiring her while being a good listener. Elise was very animated when she talked, her small hands gesturing with each word coming out of her mouth. Her head often joined the dance, bouncing her dark red hair—cut just below the shoulders—whenever she was making a point.
What James liked best of all about Elise, though, were her eyes. They sparkled, and he found himself being drawn back to them over and over. The color of her eyes wasn’t physically bright, actually quite a dark brown, but she had a way of lighting everything up when she looked at him.
Elise was born in a place called Lincoln in the heart of North America on the border of the Confederated United States. She moved west to Portland in the Democratic Union at the age of nine and lived there until she went to Berkeley to study biology.
By the time her life story got to her twenty-second birthday, his AI band had finished copying her badge. That should have been his signal to retire and get some rest. Historical records showed that the explosion occurred sometime in the early morning. He had to be ready. Instead, James stayed and listened to her for another hour until she finished her life story up to about ten minutes ago.
She had begun her career on the hybrid Eco-Kelp Initiative growing mutant kelp that cleaned ocean water, and eventually moved on to the Ozone Terra-Layering Program, where at the ripe old age of twenty-six she became one of the foremost biological technologists in the world. Now, at thirty-one, she was the head biologist for the Nutris Initiative’s Bacterial Assembly Project, and a civilian colonel to boot.
“So what would the military want with bacterial assembly?” he asked, polishing off his sixth glass of whiskey. This stuff was so good he had to drink his fill now before his jump tomorrow, hangover be damned.
She arched her eyebrow. “Are you messing with me? That’s the second time you said that. Why on Gaia do you think this is a military base?”
James didn’t have an answer. Because Smitt told him so wasn’t a good enough reason. Some of the things he’d learned tonight didn’t match the briefing, and while bad information wasn’t uncommon, it was rarely this far off the mark. But then, this was supposed to be a secret installation, so perhaps the real reason behind the platform had been lost in time. Or maybe this was Elise’s cover? James’s mind raced in circles as he thought of the possibilities. He didn’t like not knowing. At the end, though, he reminded himself, it shouldn’t matter. He had a job to do.
It was getting late, though the arctic sun still shone brightly in the sky. A warm orange hue bathed the platform with an eerie luminescent glow that reminded him of a rare pleasant dream. With the way this evening had gone, James doubted his dreams could best its reality.
Elise was a little tipsy, having taken him for his word and drunk her fill, and then some. She wavered a little on her feet, only occasionally leaning on him for support as they walked back to her habitat.
“All right, mister,” she said, pointing at the door. “This is where I get off. Let’s do this again real soon. Tomorrow?”
James couldn’t bring himself to say yes.
She rolled her eyes. “It’s all right. I’m getting used to your modus operandi. Not exactly a silver-tongued operator, huh?”
James wasn’t sure what “silver-tongued” or “modus operandi
”
meant, but he nodded. “Well,” he said, “tomorrow then.”
He turned to leave when she grabbed him by the shoulder, rose up on her toes, and kissed him. James froze. She reached her hand behind his head and pulled it toward her. He tasted her dirty martini on her lips and felt her press his body against hers. They lingered, and for a moment, James forgot who he was and why he was here. Elise Kim was the only thing important in his world.
Eventually, she pulled back and mussed his hair. “For future reference, that’s what you’re supposed to do.” And then with a wink, she disappeared into the habitat.
“James, your life signs are all over the place. Is there a problem?”
“I’m good, Smitt,” James said. “Real good.”
He strolled back toward his pod, enjoying the cool breeze and the ocean air one last time. Compared to most missions, this one had been magical, and it was all because he had happened to meet Elise. It was just too bad it’d have to end tomorrow. James desperately hoped he wouldn’t run into her. There was no telling how he might react.
He was almost back at his own habitat when he crossed a section of Sector Two he hadn’t wandered through before. One of his bands signaled an alert. Alarmed, James scanned the area.
“Smitt, something is wrong. Jump band just triggered a warning. The chronostream here is frayed. Someone recently jumped into this zone.”
The explosion kicked off the morning with a thunderous boom that rocked the entire platform. Sometime between when he had dropped Elise off at her habitat and sunrise, Sector Four’s hydro plant had overloaded and obliterated the sector, crippling the entire city. Unfortunately, Sector Four was the central hub that housed the main foundation that kept the city together. Years of careful planning fell apart within a matter of minutes.
Soon, the connecting modules frayed as the supports for the facility were thrown off balance. Entire buildings, some almost as tall as skyscrapers, toppled into the ocean. Fires broke out across the adjacent platforms.
James rushed out of his habitat and saw Sector Three crack down the middle, splitting what used to be the cafeteria in two, dumping buildings and throngs of people into the ocean. All around him, masses of screaming people fled toward Sector Five to try to escape on transports.
James powered on his exo and waded through the injured and the dead, mentally blocking out the grim sight. The air was filled with the sounds of a city dying, not unlike when he had worked a salvage through the razing of Carthage, or the rape of the Copernicus Luna Colony during the early days of the Warring Tech period.
James didn’t think a platform this large could sink from one explosion, even if it had occurred at a critical structural point. The sinking must have been the result of either criminally negligent engineering or an unfortunate coincidence. James wasn’t a big believer in coincidences.
An entire group of people running in front of him disappeared under a toppling building, their cries for help drowned by the screech of tortured metal. Another group was swallowed by the ocean when the platform below them gave. Everywhere he ran, the loud crack of metal tearing followed. James pushed the people out of his mind and continued on. The past was already dead. He was only witnessing the last moments of a historical replay.
A lighting tower squealed and collapsed as he passed underneath. If his exo hadn’t been at full power, it might have killed him. James brushed it aside and continued to an underwater test lab on the lower level of Sector Two where the first mark, a subparticle filterer, was located.
Abandoned and unmanned, the lab tilted at a fifteen-degree angle. Water was pooling at one corner of the room. He waded waist-deep through the hallways until his AI band identified the mark, a series of intricate machines connected by tubes and filters in a mostly submerged room. James cut the connections from the floor, ripped the cylinder and the machines out of their foundations, and placed them in his netherstore.
“Great abyss, Smitt.” James watched as his power levels dipped. “This thing weighs a couple of tons. It’s draining the netherstore faster than anticipated. I’m not sure if I can store all three containers and still maintain enough power for a jump back.”
“Make do, James. Reduce power to some of your bands if you have to.”
James ran out of the teetering building and sped toward the second mark. Within minutes, his levels were down to 94 percent.
James sped past several groups of people clinging to whatever they could grab for dear life. Others were still futilely trying to reach the transports in Sector Five. He wanted to yell that none of the ships on Nutris would escape the doomed platform. He wanted to tell them to make peace in their last precious moments alive.
James could have sworn he heard a woman’s voice calling for Salman. If he actually had, he knew who that would be. Elise Kim was the last person he needed to see right now. He pushed her out of his thoughts and refused to turn around.
The building housing the next mark still had people running around inside. James ignored them as he hurried against traffic toward a giant circular room used as one of the main testing labs on Nutris. He burst into the room and saw two scientists working frantically to dislodge a strange-looking machine from its base. There was a large crystal floating in a glass cylinder at the nexus of an array of machines connected by meshes of strange metal thongs. Several glowing needles attached to circular hoops rotating on axis points surrounded the crystal. James worried that this fragile-looking thing might break if he tore it out of its base.
